Jeremiah 9

1. Oh, that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!

2. Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging place for traveling men, that I might leave my people and go away from them! For they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.

3. “And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies. But they are not valiant for the truth on the earth; for they go from evil to evil, and they do not know Me,” says the LORD.

4. “Everyone beware of his neighbor, and do not trust any brother! For every brother will supplant his neighbor, and will walk with slanders.

5. And everyone will deceive his neighbor and will not speak the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and they weary themselves to commit iniquity.

6. Your dwelling is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know Me,” says the LORD.

7. Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, “Behold, I will refine them and try them; for what else can I do because of the daughter of My people?

8. Their tongue is a slaughtering arrow; it speaks deceit; one speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, but in his heart he lies in ambush.

9. Shall I not visit them for these things?” says the LORD. “Shall not My soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”

10. I will take up a weeping and a wailing for the mountains, and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness; because they are burned up, so that none can pass through them; nor can men hear the voice of the cattle. Both the birds of the heavens and the beasts have fled; they are gone.

11. “And I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a den of jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah desolation, without a living soul.”

12. Who is the wise man who may understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of the LORD has spoken, that he may declare it? Why does the land perish and burn up like a wilderness, so that none passes through?

13. And the LORD says, “Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them, and have not obeyed My voice, and have not walked in it,

14. But they have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after the Baalim, which their fathers taught them.”

15. Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, “Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and make them drink poisonous water.

16. I will also scatter them among the nations, whom neither they nor their fathers have known. And I will send a sword after them until I have consumed them.”

17. Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Think carefully, and call for the mourning women, that they may come. And send for the wise women, that they may come;

18. And let them make haste and take up a weeping for us, so that our eyes may run down with tears, and waters flow from our eyelids.

19. For a voice of weeping is heard out of Zion. ‘How are we plundered! We are greatly ashamed because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.’ ”

20. Yet hear the Word of the LORD, O women, and let your ear receive the word of His mouth, and teach your daughters to weep, and each one teach her neighbor to mourn.

21. For death has come up into our windows, and has entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from the street and the young men from the town squares.

22. Speak, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Even the bodies of men shall fall as dung on the open field, and as the fallen grain after the reaper; and none shall gather them.’ ”

23. Thus says the LORD, “Do not let the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor let the mighty man glory in his might; do not let the rich man glory in his riches;

24. But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness, in the earth; for in these I delight,” says the LORD.

25. “Behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that I will punish all those who are circumcised only in the flesh.

26. Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the sons of Ammon, and Moab, and all who have the corners of their hair polled, who dwell in the wilderness. For all these nations are not circumcised, and all the house of Israel, are not circumcised in heart.”